Social media
Social media and PR
Without a doubt, the web and social media are making it easier for
businesses to communicate with their publics. At the same time,
where there used to be a clear delineation between marketing and
public relations, the impact of the web has resulted in a blurred line
between the two industries.
Some would argue that this is leading to the “death” of public
relations. On the contrary, the web is actually helping to enhance
the efficiency of the PR industry.
The question is: How to incorporate social media and inbound
marketing to enhance ‟ PR efforts?
Social media and PR
Public relations has been around for almost 100 years and will not
loose its purpose and reason for existence anytime soon.
Put simply, public relations is the practice of managing
communication between a particular organization and its publics.
Any given organization has a number of publics. Whether it‟s by
communicating with prospects, customers, media, investors, the
government, or even internally with employees, PR is something that
businesses will always need.
Social media and PR
People have always said good – and bad – things about brands, and
now that social media has risen in popularity, it means people have
another platform to talk about companies and their
products/services.
The major difference, however, is in the viral nature of this
platform. When someone mentions your brand in social media,
there is much more potential for other people to notice, and it’s
monumentally easier for conversations to spread much more quickly
and easily. SM has potential to reach a much larger audience than
ever before.
SC in PR today: opportunity to spread its message and missing
valuable – and even damaging – conversations that could be taking
place about your brand.
Social media and PR
Media relations
Media relations - only one silo of public relations, but often thought
of when public relations is mentioned.
Obtaining coverage in media publications (TV, radio, podcasts, online
video, newspapers, magazines, online news sites, blogs, etc.) is a
great way to spread the word about your business and its
products/services.
Where advertising is paid placement in media publications, PR
coverage is free, third-party validation, which often results in more
credibility for your business.
How can social media help you do this?
Social media and PR
1. Step
Connect & Develop Relationships With Influencers in Social Media
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Journalists
Reporters
Bloggers
Influencers - who cover topics in your industry
• Whereas you previously had to go through mass media to
get your message across, the web and social media now give
you access to numerous influencers with which you can
easily interact and develop relationships, all by yourself.
• By communicating with these influencers, you can ensure
your business is top-of-mind when an opportunity for a story
comes along.
Social media and PR
Twitter
Many journalists, reporters, and bloggers are available on
Twitter
Twitter = a great way to introduce yourself and your company
to the media. But how do you find the influencers in your
industry on Twitter?
Possible ways:
• To look for influential blogs in your industry (use blog search
engines like Technorati), subscribe to them, and start
following their authors on Twitter.
• Start following journalists who target your industry. Then
start tweeting with them, but don’t oversell your business or
product.
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Develop relationships by tweeting about an article of theirs you
enjoyed or ask how they feel about a particular topic on which they
write. Sometimes reporters will also use Twitter to broadcast that
they’re seeking subjects or sources for a particular story they’re writing.
Social media and PR
Twitter Tools for Finding Influencers:
• Twitter Grader: Twitter Grader is one of free Grader tools
that can help you find the top Twitter users by location and
also measure the authority of a particular user.
• Muck Rack: Muck Rack is a free website that enables you to
search for and locate journalists by source (publication) or
by beat (topic).
• JournalistTweets: This free site curates tweets from
journalists and allows users to filter journalists on Twitter by
industry. http://sos.cision.com/
Social media and PR
Social media and PR
Social media and PR
Social media and PR
Twitter Tools for Finding Influencers:
• Twitter Grader: Twitter Grader is one of free Grader tools
that can help you find the top Twitter users by location and
also measure the authority of a particular user.
• Muck Rack: Muck Rack is a free website that enables you to
search for and locate journalists by source (publication) or
by beat (topic).
• JournalistTweets: This free site curates tweets from
journalists and allows users to filter journalists on Twitter by
industry. http://sos.cision.com/
Social media and PR
Facebook and Linked In
Facebook and LinkedIn are great ways to maintain
relationships with media, but beware:
These tools are a little bit more personal than Twitter.
Don’t start friending every reporter you find in your industry.
Instead, use Twitter as a way to initiate and grow the
relationship.
Once the relationship exists, consider connecting on Facebook
and/or LinkedIn.
Social media and PR
BatchBook
• Not a free tool
• Enables to keep track of your communication with
influencers.
• Core function: to serve as an address book that you can use
to keep contact information (including social media
credentials) for people (e.g. the journalists or bloggers you
connect with), but it also allows you to keep track of any
email or other communication so you have a record of who
you’ve been in touch with.
Social media and PR
Pitching
- Is a recipe who to master the art of presentation of a project
or idea, attract immediately, persuade about its quality and get
acceptance for it (get other partners)
Stay Targeted:
• Know the journalist/blogger and the beat(s) and topic(s) he or she
covers.
• Before you pitch people, spend the time to get to know their style
and the topics they write about. Make sure you read their content,
and, when appropriate, leave comments. This will show them
you’ve done your homework, are already engaged with their work,
• It helps you to decide about which journalists are appropriate for
what you’re pitching.
Sibylle Kurz, Pitch it!
Social media and PR
Sourcing journalists: info@publication.com
OR
• Vocus (www.vocus.com)
• Cision ( us.cision.com)
• And others
Paid services that offer large databases that keep an accurate tab on
the contact information for various journalists who write for different
publications and what their specific beats are.
Social media and PR
• Don’t Pitch the Same People Repeatedly: Segment your targets
and only pitch people who are very appropriate for the story
you’re pitching. The next time you pitch for something different,
target different people.
• Be concise: Your initial pitch shouldn’t be long, and you should
avoid email attachments. Journalists often don’t have time to read
pages and pages of email or even press releases.
• Initial pitch - short, sweet, compelling, and highlight the key
points
• Have Something Interesting to Offer: What’s new and different
about your story? Is it particularly timely? Have an angle, and make
it interesting.
• Personalize It: Show your target you’ve done your homework.
Mention specific reasons why what you have to offer will benefit
his /her readers.
Social media and PR
HARO – Help the reported out
Internet tool that helps to connect journalists‟ story needs with
PR professionals who might be great sources.
PR practitioners can register for a thrice-daily email that highlights
queries submitted by journalists looking for sources on specific
topics or stories. PR folks can then scan the email and instantly
reply to any appropriate queries.
HARO is especially helpful for businesses that are interested in
reaching out to journalists but can’t commit a lot of man-hours
to pitching.
Social media and PR
HARO - increased popularity, for each query very large
number of responses.
Important: respond to a pitch only if it is appropriate, and
try your best to make your pitch stand out.
Future benefit: Even if your pitch doesn’t end up getting
selected for a particular story, journalists often put rejected
pitches in their back pockets for future story ideas that
might be more appropriate.
Social media and PR
Creative content
Content has the ability to showcase the company as an industry
thought leader, in addition to having some major SEO, social
media, and lead generation benefits.
In terms of public relations, content also has the ability to get
you some media coverage.
By creating something interesting, compelling, or even funny,
people will naturally want to talk about it, share it with their
friends, or even write about it – no pitching required.
Why videos go viral? It’s because the content itself is so
remarkable, people couldn’t help but spread it.
Social media and PR
Web syndication
Web syndication is a form of
syndication in which website material is
made available to multiple other sites.
Most commonly, web syndication refers
to making web feeds available from a
site in order to provide other people
with a summary or update of the
website's recently added content (for
example, the latest news or forum
posts).
Social media and PR
How to making interesting, creative content?
• Create Fun, Interesting Content
• Publish Interesting Industry Data & Research
• Earlier this year, the website Suitcase.com conducted a
survey about how increased baggage fees and tightened
security regulations are affecting consumer behavior and
found that over half of respondents are planning to travel
lighter and check fewer bags. With the results of the survey,
they compiled a report and created a landing page about it
on their website. Because the results of their research were
so compelling and interesting, the report was subsequently
featured in an article on ReadersDigest.com.
Social media and PR
How to making interesting, creative content?
Social media and PR
How to making interesting, creative content?
• Promote Content in Social Media
• corporate Twitter account or a Facebook Fan Page,
not only helps to promote content, but also
maintains a presence on these sites
• Create News Releases
• Press releases have long been a staple in public
relations practitioners‟ toolkits.
• New approach – news releases
Social media and PR
Goals to create news releases
PR professionals create news releases for a number of
different reasons. Here are some of the top ones:
• Generating traffic to your website
• Getting journalists and/or bloggers to write about your
company‟s story
• Publishing “ceremonial announcements” over the wire
• Building inbound links and increasing SEO to help your
website rank better in Google and other search engines
Social media and PR
To dos:
Content and Format:
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Be direct and concise.¨The press release market is
already very saturated, and journalists and bloggers can’t
read every release that crosses the wire. Making your
release focused and to-the-point will give it a better
chance for survival.
Have something worth saying. Don’t write a news
release about nothing. Keep in mind that not every bit of
company news is worthy of a release.
Write using a newsworthy angle. Tying in your news with
some kind of newsworthy angle or story will increase its
chances of catching a blogger’s or journalist’s attention.
Conduct keyword research to discover your best
keywords. Use Google‟s Keyword Tool to help you
decide on which keywords to focus. Then use those
keywords in your release, especially in anchor text. This
will help in terms of SEO.
Social media and PR
To dos:
Content and Format:
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Use a descriptive headline, and limit it to 80 characters or fewer.
Lengthy headlines often get cut off on portal sites. In addition,
because search engines treat a news release’s headline as an H1
(Header) tag, it’s beneficial to also make your headline keyword-rich.
Eliminate Gobbledygook: Gobbledygook, a term coined by viral
marketing strategist David Meerman Scott, is jargon, clichés, and overused, hype-filled words that no longer mean anything.
• Eliminate these words from your releases. (Examples include
“cutting-edge,” “flexible,” “easy-to-use,” “innovative” etc.)
Communicate in words everybody understands.
• News releases are now syndicated on the web, the media aren’t
the only ones who will come across your news.
Don’t use formatting bullets (rarely syndicated)
Include your logo (not syndicated, but will do no harm).
Don’t embed multimedia elements. Instead of embedding a video or
photo directly into the release, publish it somewhere on your own
website (such as on your company blog), and link to it in the release.
This will save you money as well as drive traffic to and centralize
interaction on your own website.
Social media and PR
To dos:
Regarding links
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Put the most important link at the beginning. Some portal sites will
automatically cut off your release after a certain word count. For the
best chance of generating traffic back to your site, include the link to
which you want to generate the most traffic early on in the release.
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Always use anchor text. Not all portal sites will syndicate anchor text
links, but for the ones that do, you’ll receive maximum SEO benefit
from inbound links utilizing anchor text. (anchor text: The anchor text,
link label, link text, or link title is the visible, clickable text in a
hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the
ranking that the page will receive by search engines).
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Use full URLs next to anchor text links for important links. Don’t do
this for every link, but do use it for the one to which you really want to
drive traffic. This will ensure that the URL still gets pulled in when
portal sites won’t syndicate anchor text.
Social media and PR
To dos:
Regarding links
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Don’t repeat links or anchor text. Repeating links or anchor text
within your release will dilute the value of the links in the eyes of
search engines.
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Don’t litter your release with links. Search engines will frown upon
very link-heavy releases. For a 300-500 word release, 3-4 anchor text
links is appropriate.
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Link to internal pages, too. Are you trying to generate some traffic or
SEO authority to other pages on your site besides your homepage?
Link to these pages within your release.
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When possible, make anchor text the same as your page title. This
will place increased emphasis on that link for search engines.
Social media and PR
Wire services
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Marketwire
Business Wire
PR Newswire
PRWeb
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The Company Blog
Distributing news releases via a wire service might not be worth
doing for every bit of news
Therefore
publishing articles on a company blog is a great
way to share all of your company news.
The best thing to do is to create separate blog for company news,
product updates, etc.
• Publish Blog-Friendly News Release Content: Content should
be less formal and more conversational in tone than standard
PR. You can also include a link back to the article from the
original press release to drive traffic back to your site.
• Publish Company News, Updates, or Achievements: Is your
CEO speaking at an upcoming industry conference? Did you
recently win an award?
• Communicate Product/Service Launches or Updates: Did you
add a new service offering? Communicate it to your
customers, prospects, and fan base with an article on the blog.
Social media and PR
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Demonstrate Your Company’s Unique Personality: Did you recently
hold a fun company-wide event like a scavenger hunt, a holiday party,
or a softball tournament? Write about it! Even better: Create a
corporate Flickr account, upload pictures from the event and embed a
slideshow into the blog post. People will love getting to know the
people and culture.
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Include Social Media Share Links: Give the readers of your blog an
easy way to share articles with their networks and spread your
messages. Include social media share links on every article to enable
readers and subscribers to spread your article on social media sites like
Twitter and Facebook.
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Improve SEO: Like any blog, a company blog can have great search
engine optimization benefits. In addition, influencers are always
looking for story ideas, and writing an article about something unique
will get indexed in search engines. Who knows – your article just might
pop up as a result in Google for a story for which a journalist needs
sources.
http://www.abb-conversations.com/cs/
Social media and PR
Social media newsroom
• Page on website where the media and bloggers can go to
easily obtain this information.
.Provide Clear Media Contact Info at the Top: Sometimes a journalist
or blogger is simply looking for someone to talk to- and has to find it
FAST! Also include multiple methods of communication – an email
address, a phone number, even a Twitter handle!
http://www.abb.com/
www. abb.cz
Social media and PR
Social media and PR
• Links, Links, Links: Instead of cluttering your page with tons of
information, include links to other pages on which you expand
upon certain information.
• Incorporate Social Media Elements: Your newsroom is a great
spot to aggregate the various places your company maintains a
presence in social media. Include links to your Facebook Fan
Page, your company‟s Twitter feed, Flickr account, YouTube
channel, LinkedIn page, etc.
Social media and PR
• Links, Links, Links: Instead of cluttering your page with tons of
information, include links to other pages on which you expand
upon certain information.
• Incorporate Social Media Elements: Your newsroom is a great
spot to aggregate the various places your company maintains a
presence in social media. Include links to your Facebook Fan
Page, your company‟s Twitter feed, Flickr account, YouTube
channel, LinkedIn page, etc.
Social media and PR
• Include Interactive Elements: People like to absorb information
and be stimulated in different ways. Give your visitors variety.
Some ideas include embedding a video overview of your
company or product, including eye-catching icons and photos,
or including links to audio (e.g. a podcast interview featuring
your CEO).
Social media and PR
• Media monitoring
• Media monitoring and participation - important for any
modern PR professional.
• Social media - offer great tools for monitoring the conversation
about your brand so you know where people are talking about
you and can participate accordingly. While paid social media
monitoring tools and services exist, there are also many free
tools available to help.
Social media and PR
Google Alerts: Set up multiple Google Alerts for your company,
brand, products, leaders, etc. The alerts will get delivered directly
to your email inbox at the frequency you indicate (e.g. daily or as
they happen)
Benefit: track media coverage and mentions of your brand on the
web on news sites, in blogs, etc.
Twitter: Monitor mentions of your brand on Twitter with tools like
Twitter Search or HootSuite.
Google Reader and RSS Feeds: Set up RSS feeds in Google Reader
of searches of your brand in other popular social media sites such
as Flickr, Digg, Delicious, etc. Scan the results in your reader daily
for mentions.
Facebook Insights: Stay on top of and participate in discussions
occurring on your company‟s Facebook Fan Page. Use your Fan
Page‟s Facebook Insights Dashboard (found in the left sidebar
when you‟re on your page as an admin)